Mary Sue
This troper had her first mary sue for three years, but after some time erased her. *Though this has yet to be published, this troper remembers during his times of breakdowns caused by Super Robot Wars Original Generations, he created an Anti Sue, nicknamed G. While at times he was an amiable man who worked his ass off to be counted as a member of the team, certain events turns him into a revenge-obsessed Jerkass, and with his Superpower Lottery Ticket, he dedicates himself to commit genocide to his subject of revenge (Bartoll), and repeatedly asks those who suffered due to them to join him and brutalize those machines (which of course, by the standards of Super Robot Wars characters, ANYTHING is forgivable) for the sake of their 'broken pride'. Of course, the actual Big Bad (Dark Brain) reveals that it was HE who gave G the Superpower Lottery Ticket, and since he can no longer be of any entertainment, he killed G, leaving the OG Numbers to pity him about what a foolish path he took. To discuss his Stu status, refer the Discussion page, but it is pretty certain that he took the spotlight of the story (despite not playing any major parts in the major story, which remains untouched), and he's only a God Mode Sue against Bartoll, and sucks against any other kinds of enemies. *This troper plays a Parody Sue on a role-playing forum who, rather than having Sueish traits herself, writes lots of self-insert stories in which she does and who lies about having said Sueish traits to others (such as being able to turn into a wolf, being Really Seven Hundred Years Old, etc.). The ironic thing is, she's fantastically comedic and really could potentially have some of those abilities as per world rules, and several characters have initially believed her claims about her "powers." The sad thing? Because she's also a "local parody" of many tropes specific to that forum, a few people have taken her seriously. *This editor, frustrated with the way an admin (on a roleplaying forum which forced character profiles to be reviewed and accepted by admins) rejected his rather original character design for it being against the rules (which it wasn't, due to the hazy way the rules were defined), purposely made a Mary Sue named Mary-Ann Roulette Yukos Sakura (MARY-Sue) and is waiting to see how quickly she is accepted. think I'm doing it right? For additional humour value? The admin's character profile is the only profile I've ever thought worth MiSTing. Those of you who know your Digimon will have to reinsert your lower jaw at some point. **Corrected: This troper is horridly unsavvy about Digimon, and still lost his jaw. That's a Mary-Sue if I've ever seen one. **This troper also knows nothing of Digimon, and wants to know more about Chelsea's hometown of America. **...And just a few weeks, later, the proposed-character thread is deleted. (Repost your proposal somewhere?) ***It actually got accepted and then moved. Here you are. *This troper sometimes gets worried about how frequently the term gets tossed around, since, by the lazier definitions, she... kinda is a Sue. Let's see, psychologically-abusive former stepfather; sometimes feels ugly even though she's been called variously 'pretty', 'beautiful' and 'aethereal' in the past; thinks there's no way anyone could like the 'real' her (though that's justified, somewhat); daughter of a Badass Bookworm Hot Shounen Mom and a Genius Bruiser father; has a name that, all together, translates from various languages as "Resolute Word of the Bicorned God of Justice, He Who Oversees a Change in Era, Defender of Mankind"; has (as can be discerned from the above) a knack for foreign languages; tries to be nice to everyonebefore unveiling her tsuntsun side; has a nice clear contralto; plays guitar; has Kaleidoscope Eyes and apparently (from certain angles) pointed ears; owns several long coats; doesn't like people flirting with her because it's always the people she's not interested in (and even if it were, she'd have no idea what to do about it - not that she doesn't wish she knew); sometimes looks a lot older or a lot younger than she actually is; has the Most Common Super Power and Hartman Hips; ... y'know, she gets the impression she should have shut up a while ago. Maybe before you picked up that flamethrower... **No Mary Sue would have a name that means He Who Oversees a Change in Era. So you're safe. **Not really, she's still as Sueish as at least 90% of the ones that're in fanfics. **...wow. **This Troper says that, if you think you might be a Mary Sue, you're probably not, just by worrying about it. If anything, you're a Genre Savvy Mary Sue, which makes you less of a Mary Sue. **Come on now. All of the qualities you mention are incredibly common. Everyone's name means something wierd if you look into it. Everyone has some skills worthy of note. Everyone owns a coat. If you don't ever feel yourself ugly then you are a massive egoist, and if no one has ever told you you are attractive then you have no friends. Everyone likes to think that they try to be nice to everyone. **Something Awful disagrees, if it makes you feel any better. ***My god, that's hysterical. If I were going to lie, don't they think I'd tell a remotely plausible one? ***That post wasn't accusing you of lying at all. They just said that most of your points are very specifically either a) unremarkable or b) trumped up notions of self importance. For example, everyone and their dog plays guitar and gets upset at their parents, and you do not have pointed ears. And the sort of person who can use the word "aethereal" with a straight face should be run away from very fast. *This troper had a friend disown her a few years ago on the grounds that she was a living Mary Sue and the friend couldn't stand it anymore. It was a very strange breakup, complete with a rather disastrous poem by the ex-friend. Said ex-friend has a lot of issues... *This troper had a girl on her academic team who got major roles in all the school plays, played second chair violin, got a perfect SAT and 5s on six AP tests, and won Teen Jeopardy. *Although this troper doesn't know the Sue in question she has gotten honours, was the best in five of her classes (all academic), is on the music council and plays on the girls soccer team. **This troper knew four girls like that. Four! Although only three of them were full-on Purity Sue. The last one (who would have been a classic sue right down to her horrifying birth name) turned out to be bitchy and vulgar out of the school environment. *This troper knows one as well, who's continued straight into college, being extremely beautiful, currently getting straight A's in medical school, vice president of the student government, was born into money, and is engaged to a ruggedly handsome Marty Stu from a family with even more money who's going into politics. She considers this troper a friend, and is a genuinely nice person, but... living in the shadow of a Mary Sue at student events isn't fun. *Another real-life example! This troper's best friend of 6 years is possibly the only person she knows who manages to be beautiful (she often gets away with free food at cafes etc.), unbelievably smart (highest I.B. grades that anyone at her college has EVER gotten), kind (she volunteers for and gives money to loads of charities) and great fun to hang out with. She is also the most down-to-earth, sane, strong person this troper knows - although that may be something to do with her having (and she admits this) a lot of luck and a pretty easy life. *This troper once thought of writing a Mega Crossover fanfic where Ash Ketchum ended up becoming the most powerful character, being able to use any magic or pokemon attack that he's seen before. His weakness? Well, A: He's still gullible enough to fall for a Paper Thin Disguise, B: Everyone else (including his allies) would rather use him as a human shield, and C: Unlike his Genre Savvy allies, he is extremely, EXTREMELY Genre Blind. **On a side note, I also created a character for an RPG I want to make someday who has blue hair, speaks with Gratuitous Japanese, is a princess of a large and powerful empire, and has the "Mimic" ability with all-around decent stats. Thoughout the game, she basicly annoys the hell everyone else, who just keep her around because they feel responsible for her they can't get her to leave them alone. Oh yes, and it turns out she's actually a clone of another character, except modified to be some sort of ultimate weapon. and to make matters worse, she tries to make aHeroic Sacrifice at the end, despite everyone else begging her not to, which actually makes things worse. Of course, she turns out to be fine in the end :P **Yes, I like this trope. Do you have a problem with it? *This troper has met many, MANY people like this. *Lockea is, quite literally, a name stolen from this troper's first Mary Sue character. She still uses it when roleplaying, albeit she's no longer a Mary Sue (she hopes). **Heretical Lyra is doubling over in laughter and shock at how small an internet this is right now. (You know why.) And coincidentally, Lyra was also a Sue handle in several things which have since received a smiting. *This Troper created a character named Deimos who is a Utahraptor Kravist (Krav Maga practitioner) for his Land Before Time fan fiction Land Before Time:Twilight Valley. If a Utahraptor Kravist isn't Bad Ass enough, he's also skilled at making Stone Age weapons AND is a refugee AND is one of the main characters. *When she was still R Ping as a greenrider in Dragon Ridersof Pern RPGs, this troper ran into another writer's Mary Sue who took advantage of her dragon's talkative nature—which this troper was quite careful to mention annoyed most other riders/dragons—and dragged on the conversation (with the dragon) to the point of petting my character's dragon without permission. Dragons themselves don't mind extra attention, but their riders view it as impolite. The mundane equivalent would be walking up to a dog-owner and petting their dog without asking. Also: How do you pet a twenty-foot-tall dragon? Even allowing for the dragon crouching down, their head would still be higher than a teenager could reach unaided. Not to mention that the Sue's writer didn't even notice my ever-growing hints that maybe you should stop chatting with my dragon and let us whisk you away to the Weyr so you can IMPRESS YOUR OWN? *This troper roleplays a Parody Sue in City Of Heroes - an Incarnate of a god, with purple hair, who's the daughter of Hero One (her mother died giving birth to her), and has dated, at separate times, Statesman, Manticore, Scirocco, is a sharpshooter with a bow (which, in the view of Co X where the bow-wielder is the Ensemble Darkhorse is essentially Katanas Are Just Better with a disguise) despite never holding one since a month or two ago, has an arsenal of random powers that she totally has, just doesn't feel like using... and is lying through her teeth for all of it. She's considered mentally unstable, and almost everybody has seen through her disguise (biggest giveaways being the fact Hero One was never married, and she's supposedly the Incarnate of a Shinto god, despite the source of said powers only making people the incarnates of Greek gods), and yet she continues to stick to this ridiculously impossible story. **This Troper plays a character that he plans to do a death and rebirth storyline for (Did I mention his initials were unintentionally JC? It's not Symbolic). To off set it, the character is basically a male River Tam sans Waif Fu (he can kill you with his brain) and is an absolute failure as a hero and a definite coward, especially when related to the people who gave him his powers (or improved them) and may be a budding sociopath. Although I will say that the psychic powers trope that Sues often get is averted by the fact that he can hear everything in the city all at once and that he actually rarely focuses on one person's thoughts long enough to get facts out of them (though if people ask me to hear something, it does get a mention.). *This troper recently finished a 60 chapter long Pokemon fanfiction, which had several Original Characters. One of the was... don't laugh!... A girl from an invisible village with Psychic powers, who happened to be realated with Ash. As soon as this troper realized, how Mary-Suey this character was, she did her best to find a good balance between her and the canon-characters, to keep the quality of the fanfiction up. Sucessfully, according to the readers. (the fanfic happend to get quite popular at deviantart) *This troper is writing a book which contains a certain character. Now, this character has most of the Common Mary Sue Traits. She's extraordinarily beautiful and likable, has powerful magical abilities (though this isn't strictly speaking exceptional in-world), the ability to change the color of her hair. She's a Friend To All Living Things, and perpetually happy, dressing in clothes bright enough to blind the unwary and literally shooting rainbows out of her finger prints. The funny thing? She exists primarily to go on about how much she's in love with another character, who's the real star of the show. Among other things, he's the smartest student in school, on fast track to becoming the most powerful magician in the world, defeats his enemies within five minutes of entering their geographical location, and warps the world around him to such an extent it's been recognized within the story. And you know what? This troper's not sorry. He just wanted to see what a truly competent character would be like. And maybe throw in some Wish Fulfillment, but that's incidental. **Get help. **Doesn't existing only for some dude make her even more unrealistic? ***Existing as a character, not as a person. Well, except for the part where his whole universe essentially exists solely to be a stage for his exploits, so I guess it's both. **Must. Resist. Urge to KILL. **Honestly, writing sues is just fine if you realize you're doing it - the problem comes in when you try to pass it off as an objectively good piece and then whine when people dislike it. *While planning a book, this Troper had her Mary-Sue character warp into Josef Mengele. It made sense at the time, but she still isn't too sure how that happened. **You too :/ *This Troper has thankfully (I think) Averted his Character from being a Mary Sue, in his Persona 4 Fanfic. Sure He was part of the S.E.E.S. team, Nerima Wrecking Crew and personaly knew the Sailor Senshi. His skills have degraded for not battleing Shadows for Two Years. He can't Channel Ki so he never knew any Martial art techniques. (Other then the Lampshade on head stealth Technique. Which works oddly enough.(Meta Humor anyone?) ) And he proved useless against the Youma, once driving a semi into one for little damage to it and maximum damage for him. Sure He can use his persona abilites when other can't. They are ten times less effective and cost ten times the amount of Sp. Recarm and Dia outside of the right condition can cause him to nearly pass out. Even then he was his idiot moments. (Getting left and right mixed up) Alos he is a bit of a jerk (Get the Main Character up by rolling him off the couch.) Also has a habit of monolougeing that is a running joke. *I know someone like this, or at least she used to be that way but she got better. By which I mean she's actually cool now. I also once thought of but will probably never write a Harry Potter fanfic that mostly was a few ordinary original characters complaining about how magic was hard, everything was dangerous and how sueish the canon characters were. it will be hard if I ever write it because I've only read the first five books. Also, I'm typically a comedy writer and will probably make it really funny and really short. Bad idea for a deconstruction. *This troper wrote something based off of Pirates Of Dark Water at the age of twelve. Suffice to say that the Sue was redheaded, heterochromic, beautiful in a weird sort of way, and did not hook up with any canon characters (although she did play matchmaker). Luckily, the story died a silent death in the night and never saw the light of day. *Lemme see... Sad past, being Butt Monkey on the eyes of the other people and everything? Check. Considers herself ugly (and fat, although I got over it) despite a few people might say the opposite? Check... Beautiful singing voice, despite not even liking to sing? ONE HELL OF A CHECK, DAMMIT. Uncommon things happening around her? Check, but these things are almost never good. Being considered highly intelligent by others? Hell yeah, yay. Being unlucky, extremely clumsy, selfish and lazy, and yet being loved? Oh, you bet it! Oh my God... I'm an Anti Sue! *This troper has a friend whose grandmother literally is Mary Sue, and by the way her husband talks she sounds like one too(but he's biased). My friend also has her grandmother's middle name but thankfully is not a Sue. *This Troper has a panfandom character named Baily Sugotaka Smith. She is a Time Lord half-breed(said girl is a robot girl) whom is a dimensional traveler, Has a HUGE F***KING VAN as her TARDIS, AND has had four boyfriends, and becomes a god of a Axis Powers Hetalia Giant Crossover with Giant Robots AU universe(She created the universe when she was in a Lotus Eater Machine, long story.). Said robot girl claims to have a lovely singing voice, but It's actually quite HORRIBLE. Second of all, she's a JerkAss to her friends(and it's NOT a facade), treats her sidekick like a ballistic weapon, deeming the attack "BUTT MONKEY NUT KICK!". And also likes explosions, ballerina dances with everyone for the lulz, and likes to wipe her memories randomly to get them back just because she gets bored. However, her reincarnated form is a wimp who is supposed to be a great hero, but she's not the hero. Her love interest is, and a canon character. Baily also becomes immortal, and averts the Who Wants To Live Forever trope, only playing it when she laments how bored she is at the multiverse for having to many predicable villains. *This troper used to write about an Mary Sue version of Taiki/Sailor Star Maker from Sailor Moon. In these stories, Taiki was 12 feet tall, extremely muscular, had an IQ of 1 million and she was only 8 years old. She also tutored Seiya, who was her stupid older sister (Yaten was also her older sister). She was said to be completely emotionless and never got angry, and she was also extremely self-sacrificing because she felt her abilities were unfair. Also, she was almost always right about things in the stories and anyone who didn't like her was treated as just being jealous or insane. This troper also obsessed over Taiki and hated any time where Taiki showed any emotion in stories requested from other people because she wanted Taiki to be perfectly unemotional, because this troper used to wish she could be more calm and unemotional herself. She later turned this character into someone "created" by a different character who was supposed to be her own self-parody. *This troper has had a mental running storyline since the age of 10. Most of the characters have mary sueish traits, and basically exist to travel into different fictional univerces and upstage the main characters. I don't regret any of it, since it makes me happy, but I've never written it down because I don't assume anybody else will ever want to read it. **That also runs coincidence with my heroes, the first one was essentially an avatar of a great hero for Digimon which turned the Digimon in question to become Humongous Mecha for the Tamers/Frontier Cast to command and Pilot, to do required Deus Sex Machina to become stronger which some protested due to Squick. As a result of Dear God What Have I Done, the hero left the realms to think it over and passed the mantle to a not so subtle Marty Stu named Sparda, giving him full reign only to watch it slowly slipping from his hands due to Angelus the Noble Demon and Rei ebbing away at him. Eventually Sparda is whittle to a mostly former shadow of himself and contemplates on the worthlessness of his skills until he finds out Tsubomi from Strawberry Panic was horribly corrupted by Angelus and this marks his call again. **Responding to parent: Same thing with me, down to the age which it started. The difference is that I slowly modified the setting to include more original stuff while downplaying the borrowed characters. It's become %100 original as of 2007. I'm writing this in 2009 and I'm still working on the setting with a friend. I hope to turn this into a series of commercial sci-fi tactical FirstPersonShooters. *This troper is currently writing, mostly for giggles, but also as a mnemonic device, a story about him becoming President of the United States, with Diego Alatriste as his VP and Godzilla as Secretary of Finance. The President toes the line between Anti Sue and Sympathetic Sue, but, really, this is all therapeutical. *This Troper was in a forum RP where his "party" consisted of 1) A woman possessed by a Cosmic Horror turned resigned Jerkass,(not played by him) 2) a brain-damaged, mass-murdering elf with a dagger that traps souls, and 3) a hideously deformed telekinetic and telepathic man with a kleptomaniacal streak. When Team Insanity, as we called ourselves, came accross a guy we had all lost to in the Out-of-character Pv P forum, who was in fact a marty stu. His rock powers were in the realm of both fantasy and science, to the point where he stopped a fire elemental in its tracks on the grounds that it was made of magma, and the supposed idiot knew it was molten rock. Speaking of which, he's described as being incredibly articulate and charismatic, and simultaneously stupid. To the point of seducing his advisor's wife of 20 years. Just to drive it home, he was a whistle-blowing asshole that told the mods on us whenever we pulled out all the stops to try to kill or otherwise hamper him. *This troper is in a mixed RP, with pokemon, Robotboy, tamagotchi, super paper mario, OC's. You name it. There is a God mod sue called Laura. She is a super pretty 12 year old (or so all of the player's other characters say) with long, blonde hair, blue eyes, she's skinny, but yet she has the most common super power. She's a cyborg on the inside but yet totally organic on the outside after an operation because she got hit by a car. She thinks she's an ugly moster but yet 'everyone' says she's beautiful. She has so many weapons it's not funny. Magnets, guns, missles from her chest. swords from her arms and back. Now, this troper god mods just to keep her characters alive because it's PG 13 and she likes describing blood. But she killed Roy from Fire Emblem in said RP, by magneting his armor off and shooting him the chest. Is she a sue or not? *Took the Mary Sue original fiction test for a real person: Barack Obama. He's a Gary Stu. (Or should I say Barry Hu) *This Troper was accused of being a Marty Stu for an online RPG game I built, ran and participated in; by someone who considered himself a 'Real Life Pirate' and never played the game. The irony is that everyone who did play expected me to be the Marty Stu in spite of all my attempts to cede the spotlight to other players and keep major plotlines at arm's reach, in part to minimize the conflict of interest of moderating as well, and in part because I was so damn busy developing the game. *This troper had a Gary Stu mega-self-insert fic of Pokemon, when he was around twelve. The main character (Self-inserted "me", obviously) knew karate (don't dwell on it too much), befriended Ash Ketchum and basically just wrote himself into the plot of Pokemon Yellow. Somehow it mutated into a poor Might And Magic fic, after about a year. But that's not the weird part. The weird part is, said character (and some plot threads from MM era) got integrated into an original story (albeit changed quite a bit), as a deconstruction of traditional Mary Sue. Said deconstruction, comes basically in a way, that the Gods of the world he exists in (or rather a Multiverse of sorts) use many common tropes and story elements (True Love, Deus Ex Machinas, Mary Sues, what have you) as methods of controlling the general population. Oh, and his Mary Sue-like image from earlier devolved into a public persona, he hates, but still maintains. Have I redeemed myself yet? *This Troper posits that any roleplay without a system will have Mary Sue characters at a five to one ratio to regular ones. The only possible solution is continous, heavy, and frequently lethal gamemaster intervention. He has yet to be proved wrong. Because he is evil, however, he has a character for such things: able to generate enforced nothingness, as both the ultimate armor (How do you hurt someone who any attempt to touch must pass through an area where nothing can exist?) and the ultimate attack (How do you survive having your body turn to an area where nothing can exist?). *This troper failed a Mary Sue litmus test— without clicking any of the boxes for "does this character look like you"? etc. This may have something do with this troper being raised dirt poor, fluent in multiple languages, a college athlete, rescuer of cute animals, of mixed race, fomer pro musician, a jack-of-all-trades, and has written scholarly papers on several widely disparate subjects. *this troper witnessed a subversion. After someone signed up on his RP forum with a Strange Girl that ranked high on the Sue-o-meter (purple eyes, mysterious appearance, extremely competent, shy yet kind, etc. ), he politely asked that the person give her some flaws. After expecting the Suethor to give her a flaw like "Occasionally has head in the clouds" or "Too kind for her own good", her creator instead made her a selfish Jerkass. This dumbstruck troper could not accept her fast enough. *Technically, shouldn't (real life, not RP example) entries here involve people who somehow warp the entire universe to their whims and benefit inexplicably? Such people DO seem to exist, and the correct response is to take notes. *There is a student who goes to this troper's old high school who not only plays OHL hockey (one step below the NHL), but is also pulling a 99% average with a full course load! *Back in my middle school days, there were two girls in my class cluster—let's call them "C" and "M". Both of them were the prettiest of all the females in the cluster, straight A's in every class, and both played on the school's basketball and soccer teams. Not to mention that our teachers couldn't shut up for one minute singing their praises on how "C" won this, or "M" got the highest on something most of us don't care about. They could almost literally do no wrong. Kind of made some of us wonder if they even had social lives, considering the shitload of things they did. *I was once doing some roleplaying. The DM was a noob, but all the other players were experienced and were going along with him because he had an interesting premise for a game. He asked us all to make characters. I wrote pages upon pages of backstory to my character and all the other roleplayers thought my character was awesome and the best character, except the DM, who didn't care about backstory and just ignored it. Then, as soon as the game started, the DM said something that blatantly contradicted my backstory. I pointed it out, and he told me to change my backstory. There was some confusion, and it turned out it contradicted the backstory of some NPC he made that had less than four sentences of backstory, which weren't even written down. We argued, and I got kicked out. Then, I rejoined with a minmaxed character called Marty Stu, who had five sentences of backstory and was STILL an obvious Mary Sue- "eh was the son of Zeus and the Virgin Mary and doezn't afraid of anything" is an actual quote from the backstory sheet- which was promptly accepted by the DM. We then kicked the DM out, promoted another player to DM, and played the game using our original characters. *This troper is guilty of making a Marty Stu, with the express intent of killing him off. In one RP, I made a character who was a paladin. Lawful Stupid, too, to the point where he wouldn't run out of a city that wanted to kill him because he'd volunteered for charity work. Complete goody-goody two-shoes with very few character flaws (except for some stupidity and perhaps being nauseatingly zealous). He is then tortured to death. Has so many Sue aspects: All purity, lack of much of a personality (I made him just to kill him off), so goody-goody two-shoes and lawful stupid you wonder how he even got promoted to a position as a Paladin, and then dies. Funny thing is, people turned out liking the character, even though I created him with the express intention of killing him off, with very little fondness. *This troper has a friend who is...very charismatic to say the least. Good thing she's so oblivious to the effect she has on people - especially guys. She currently has no less than three guys claiming (supposedly half-jokingly) to be her boyfriend and another who's obviously interested. There may be others. Must remember to investigate. *This troper has a classmate who does everything she can to try and become a Mary Sue. She constantly projects this aura of Too Good For This Sinful Earth, especially in the way she talks. She was in drama and forensics, making a point to perform poetry and skits that ALWAYS focus on princesses and fairy tales. Guess which roles she puts herself in. No really, guess. Also, she likes to wind tales that play up her horrible, tragic life (which entails of separated parents, a brother who annoys her, and general school life complete with OHMYGOD homework.) She manipulates stories to where she is always the innocent victim and everyone else is The Villain, and in all other ways is trying to hide her general Libbiness. **By the way, we're both graduating in two weeks. So Yeah. *This troper once had an RP in which he played a thief who was able to keep up with people with much better powers than him with little to no effort and on several occasions attempted to change the plot to fit his needs. I think I realized exactly how bad it was when I wrote him getting thrown through a wall by a character from a completely different RP and getting up unharmed. Luckily the site it is on is long dead and I have recognized the pratfalls of such a character. *This troper has a long-running RP character who has been repeatedly accused of being a Mary Sue. The summation of the arguments against her character? She's happily married, has red hair, and is extremely confident in her own beliefs to the point of never, ever backing down and never being willing to think of herself as wrong, even when she is. This troper's efforts to intentionally play a dangerously self-righteous character growing increasingly out of touch with reality seems to have hit a Misaimed Fandom... *lets take a look at This troper. Asshat? yes. Improbable stores of knowledge, most of which is useless? check. not particularly good looking? check. and yet, for some reason, people like me. I... I think I'm an Anti Sue. *This troper knows someone who thinks she's a Mary Sue. The unchecked egoism was a given, but what really clinched it was when she kept on saying that she's clumsy, which is neither particularly true nor was it relevant to the conversation; given that she's the most stereotypical fangirl around, she was apparently trying to make herself more Bella-y. *This troper's mother is literally named Mary Sue. She goes by a different name and hates the name "Mary Sue" so much that he couldn't even discuss the literary concept with her. *ThisTroper never gets a high Mary Sue score on tests for his characters. Perhaps he doesn't give them enough depth, or perhaps it's because he'd rather insert himself in the narration than a character. *This Troper hangs out in a roleplaying channel on IRC where one person in particular plays nothing but Mary Sues. The characters are always beautiful to the point of it being ridiculous, and always collect groups Lickspittles who hang on to them like they'd wither and die outside of said Sue's presence. One of this Troper's own characters, who was a former hanger-on, managed to break away in a particularly vicious way. This Troper himself is slightly guilty too, in that a different character displays some Sue traits (Kaleidoscope Eyes and Friend To All Living Things) though he is pretty down-to-Earth and is mostly unattractive in the 'looks like a back-alley mugger' kind of way. *This troper once took part in a 4-person online writing project. The four of us each wrote up a character, and all of us wove together a story where the 4 characters would eventually meet and team up. One character was a half-demon with great power and chi, but lacked the ability to control it well. One was a female swordswoman with powerful magic and poison attacks, but was not physically powerful compared to the others. This troper's own character was a powerful healer with incredible defensive abilities that rendered him Nigh Invulnerable, but wasn't a strong attacker and quite slow (in other words, a healing Stone Wall). The 4th person's character was a descendant of god-like demons that could kill almost anything in an instant, was practically immortal (one chapter had him survive HAVING HIS HEAD RIPPED OFF), could hit harder than the first character, possessed better magic than the second, could heal better than the third, and never seemed to have anything bad happen to him (aside from the aforementioned decapitation, which only happened because he was a child at the time, as well as an obligatory tragic backstory). Oh, and he could summon gods too. One of this troper's most prominent memories of that time were when he ended a chapter while foreshadowing a potential battle between his own character and the Mary Sue, only for the latter's writer to send him a private message stating that if their two characters were to fight, this troper's would end up dead. Because his character is just too powerful to fight and not die against (no, he didn't actually say that, but it was very heavily implied). The project was eventually dropped when three of the four writers lost interest with having their characters constantly being overshadowed by the fourth's character. Guess which three left? *This troper is helping a friend edit a book she is writing and hoping to get published. The writing itself is well done but the main character was on the path to becoming a Mary Sue. She has unusual purple eyes and long flowing hair but finds herself unattractive. Though later she goes to a concert and the hot lead singer takes one look at her, falls in love, and invites her backstage after the concert. She's described as being clumsy but she only trips twice and it never hinders her at important times. She's sarcastic, witty, out going, has lots of friends who drop everything to help her, and has two or three guys lusting after her. She later acquires magical powers and become an instant expert and one of the most powerful mages in the world. The character is also very intelligent, a straight A student, karate expert, wonderful singer and guitar player, and can speak about 4 different languages besides English. Her first name is only a slight spelling variation from the author's name and the middle and last name are meaningful names. I told my friend what I thought and suggested to her this site so she could prevent this, she too my criticism a little harshly to say the least, stating I was just jealous and didn't know anything about writing. *This troper's book he is working currently has a Mary Sue as an opposing mook- ridiculously good looking to the point of making the main character, the biggest stoic in the story and a mechanical construct, saying that he might have fallen for her. She manages to beat the main character's Badass Normal friend at swordfighting, somethig that is quite unique... and is then promptly bisected by the main hero, who barely notices her. T He main hero himself is half sue- a ridiculously good fighter (although this is justified by him being 140 years old with perfect recall, and being made of metal.) He is effectively an omniglot due to the aforementioned factors, and is also capable of regenerating quickly, and has super strength and speed. On the other hand, he is sadistic, a Blood Knight, commits full out genocide (against zombie-like creatures), tells anyone who tries to talk to him about morality to fuck off, is utterly emotionless weith the exception of joy, which he only gets from battle, and has no face. He also starts a worldwide war, and the end features him rushing into combat laughing like a maniac, with te cooling corpses of his friends behind him. *Anytime this troper runs into a Mary Sue on a RP site, he gives the same response each time: "Unholy warp-spawn! Brun in the name of The Emperor!" *This writer is afraid of his characters becoming Mary Sues. Although most of my characters, according to the Litmus Tests, are not Mary Sues, I try to do my best not to make them Sues. I usually do this by giving them standard names, make them middle-class citizens—with a few exceptions—and weaknesses and flaws, like arrogance. If any character has a particular skill they're good at, it's because they've been doing it long enough that they've refined their technique. It is also this fear that I prefer to have my characters be from real locations instead of fictional ones. The closest thing to a Mary Sue in terms of physical appearance that I've written is a Japanese girl who looks like a J-Pop star, but she's from a rich family, so there might be some implications with that. *I used to know someone at highschool-and I still sort of see her around-whom, if she were a fictional character, would be likely to be accused of being a Mary Sue. She has: a Bach of Arts with Honours in Theatre, has been the lead in musicals since she was 14, has a very pretty face which has never known the horrors of zits, has a singing voice range of OVER TWO OCTAVES, has been dancing since a little tod (and dances about four different kinds of styles including tap and ballet), the only one at my highschool to win all THREE drama trophies (that never happened before), perfect diction, perfect pitch, plays the piano, flute and some other instrument, has travelled around the world singing, is very popular, tall, and, well, etc. *This troper knew a guy from high school who was basically the definition of Marty Stu: tall, Perma Stubble, muscles, and angst. He dresses like a goth, and when the troper decided to ask if the Marty knew about the similarity. Marty says yes, and says how it irritates the hell out of him. Marty's real name was Richard. He really had a good reason to angst, his family abandoned him with an aunt in the United States. This was followed by one of his girlfriends being murdered by a wealthy Mafia Don due to the fact her family owed ridiculous sums. His life sucked *You. **Yay! *Dick Richardson is supremely fucking afraid of a prototype combat-suit equipped Enclave trooper dropped into the Capital Wasteland turning into a massive Mary Sue, especially since the suit grants a lot of abilities. He's a Child Soldier who is extremely easily manipulated (which is how a few characters get him to kill innocents) and the level of enemies are made rather tough and numerous (so they pose an actual threat to him) and nearly dies several times. He doesn't think his writing skills are up to the test, though. At least the other two characters - a doctor who think he's a gunslinging badass but is really just fond of One Liners and is horribly inaccurate, even with More Dakka, and a Chaotic Good mutant who does whatever the Hell he wants - are easier to write. *This Troper played a Mary Sue of the tragic backstory, emo variety on a World of Warcraft Roleplaying server. The character has since reformed (including a server change) and is now a Knight in Sour Armor thief/relctant agent of the good guys. Since reforming the character has however only ever won confrontations with people I knew already as being not a Godmode Sue tends to put you at a significant disadvantage in conflicts in much of World Of Warcraft's Roleplaying Community. Maybe she's turning into a Failure Sue? *This male troper wrote a Mary Sue, that was nothing but an over-idealized version of a girl I fell in love: Among her MS credential, there was purple eyes, blonde-redish hair, links to royalty, an standard tragic backstory...I know how much my character sucks, but love makes you do crazy stuff... *A character in a fantasy story this troper is writing believes that she is a Mary Sue. Given that this character has all consuming arrogance, a frightening amount of Genre Savvy, and a complete lack of regard for human life, this just makes her plain frightening. *This troper's friend Cashala has an entire SPECIES of them. Hard to kill, magical swords made form their souls, magical powers, animalistic parts... Basically, they seem to be pure Sues. THEN you realize- every single one of them is insane and/or murderous. This troper's character is the torturer, and is a decent swordsman. He's also the only one without an object for a first name. Necrosis is an allaround jackass who steals candy from babies (LITERALLY.) and kills everything he touches. The most sane of them is a pansy who can't fight. Then there's Prism, the peppy, hug-loving Psychopathic Manchild. She may well be Light Is Not Good incarnate. There's a couple more, but they're slightly less believable. *This Troper attempted a deconstruction after watching Heroes on DVD. It's hosted here *This troper (God I hate myself for actually writing this phrase) knows a few people convinced that they are real life bona fide Mary Sues. While not nearly as perfect as their fictional counterparts, they are just as obnoxious as the real deal. *This troper's RP persona is an enigmatic (and crazy!) being who somehow is able to control dimensions with her mind. She can create and destroy at will simply by wishing something away or wishing something into existence, built her entire kingdom sans the inhabitants with her mind, has a Hyperspace Arsenal up in the triple-digits, wears fancy clothing created by her own mind, and has tamed animals such as velociraptors. She once transformed her RP buddy's (the villain of that particular RP) demons into benevolent, beautiful dragons. She can also control the weather and build entirely new dimensions. She is not completely invincible, but it is very hard to defeat her. *This troper, when planning an original story, made a paladin who eventually became a huge God Mode Sue. He then had to remodel the character and the parts that invovled him completely. And the paladin became a slightly less powerful Gary Stu again. Eventually, I had to make him the Butt Monkeyto prevent him from taking over. And I'm still worried he might turn into a Sympathetic Sue. *Doom Tay: This troper has something that might be a Mary Sue in my own story, the kind that's part of its own universe and would like input on the matter. **A somewhat autistic 12-year old boy who becomes Trapped In Another World, another planet in the sci-fi sense, with nothing but his current clothes and a camcorder. He learns that he's apparently The Hero, which his poroved by his accidental demonstation of his powers and that a Morph Weapon that only works for people with this title, well, works. He initially rejects the call, until the Big Bad turns The Hero's Thou Shalt Not Kill plan against him and the plot unfolds from there. **Traits include an odd speech method that bounces between Buffy Speak and Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, Genre Savviness (Can the be a Mary Sue trait?) due to having read up on mythology in his life, but if he comes across something that's "not in the books", he's screwed(For example, he can recognize a dragon, a griffin, and a chimera, but has never heard of the nymph "subdivision" of "Aeolad", ability to "control" fireand learns to actually control it along the way, two swords (NOT katanas), a fascination with the freaky until it starts attacking him, overeracting, and a few other stuff. **Stuff that he has that come with that universe's job description of Hero include: said Pyrokinesis, can learn one's language by getting a native speaker to slap him, (can that be "common for the universe" in terms of litmus tests? He got a high score on the Litmus tests) *-raises hand sheepishly- This troper is a huge Purity Sue to the point that her Genre Savvy friends call her out on it. *Come on, lets be honest here, how many of us haven't dreamed about being a Mary Sue in real life? Having all sorts of powers and being loved by all and the like. *This troper learned what a Mary Sue was shortly after having read through the page she'd long ago written of one of her book ideas, and found that it explained exactly why she'd found her protagonist to be such a jerk. If she ever continues writing the book, though, she won't change the idealized physical description, magical gift, or personality traits (the protagonist is one of The Fair Folk, after all), but instead show the jerkiness from the viewpoint of now-sympathetic characters and make it the hinge of the internal plot arc and an influence on the external one. Hopefully, this approach won't just turn the Sue into an Anti Sue. *This troper has a friend who is so damn sweet, innocent, loving and managed to assemble the perfect team of friends for herself with apparently minimal effort within a few months of starting high school. Everyone who isn't instantly in love with her innocence tries to Break The Cutie and fails. Things happen because she just wants them too and all of her friends just go along with it simply because she wanted it. Or at least that's how it looks from the outside. From the inside, she tries very hard t preserve her own innocence, worked very hard to win over her friends and continues to work hard to keep them and avoid major drama and conflict in the group. *This troper has created a Mary Sue for his science fiction story, in that she, name Queen Pandora, is a being from an alternate dimension who is unaffected by certain laws of reality (like the speed of light) and who can synthesize gold. This is sort of balanced out by the fact that she is really abrasive and is willing to destroy anything that annoys her. Like the Greek Gods! *This troper has been writing a story that parallels the Bible (think Chronicles of Narnia and the Matrix meets Avatar the Last Airbender. On acid) and deliberately tried to go out of his way to make sure that the Messiah character (Kim) was not garishly perfect in every way, had her flaws, and had some problems with people. And yet, when this troper put Kim through the Mary Sue Litmus test...positive. *sniff* WWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!? *This troper just realized that her best friend is a Mary-Sue. She has a horrific past that, if put into writing, would seem hilariously over-the-top, and this pattern seems to be continuing since life has continually tried to break her to no avail, since she's just as sweet no matter what happens to her. She gets tons of attention from the opposite sex and has an amazing singing voice, and dresses mostly in clothes from Hot Topic. *This troper was off-handedly describing a friend to his parents, and at first couldn't understand why they were getting more and more annoyed. They explained that for there to be someone who is both a professional rocket scientist and professional model and maintains a harem of boyfriends seemed somewhat...unfair. Oh well. If it helps balance the scales any, she does occasionally seem to have a look of deep inner turmoil beneath her charming exterior. *This troper has an OC for a series!revision fanfiction that on the surface looks like a Mary Sue, but really isn't. Tragic past? Yes. Odd colored hair? Yes, but my character dyed it. Gains God-like powers over the course of the series? Yes, but it takes her time to know how to use it properly. Everyone loves her/admires her/wants to be with her/etc? Not right off the bat, and by the time the series ends not everyone likes her. Has an actual personality and flaws? Hell yes. *I sometimes worry about being a Mary Sue, but I hate being put on a pedestal. Good thing I'm near psychotic. *This troper's very first fanfiction centered on this. The fic was for Avatar: The Last Airbender and it starred a character with red hair and blue eyes who had special magic powers like freezing time and mind screw that she never used for anything. She was the childhood best friend of Zuko who eventually fell in love with her and both her biological parents were dead, her adoptive ones hated her, Azula took a special interest in torturing her, and the leader of this rebellion group hit her all the time. She was the object of at least two prophecies and turned out to be the Princess of the Elves, which if you watch Avatar you know makes absolutely no damn sense. She had a cool birthmark and was some kind of Dragon Princess Warrior chick. She had absolutely no flaws, not even informed ones, unless you count not being a very strong firebender, which doesn't count since it was never treated like a real flaw in the first place (it was made clear that it wasn't her fault for not being a good firebender, since she couldn't afford training, though one wonders why Zuko didn't just teach her since they were so chummy) and because even with her "Sub-par" skills she still managed to take on the Fire Lord and live. It didn't help that she was basically an expy of Kairi from Kingdom Hearts, with pointy ears and a tan. I wound up writing a lot of other Sues in that year and a half at the start of my writing "career" (psh) which I call my Sue Period, but that one takes the cake. I turned it into a parody, which I would link to but I don't quite understand link formatting so if anyone's interested, I can give you the URL...anyway, the point is that I learned my lesson, and um...Yeah. *The Pern Fandom is notorious for having a lot of these, partially because in the Dragonriders Of Pern books, the typical Weyrwoman has to have a lot of Mary Sue-ish traits. This troper has RP'ed several over time and has accepted several into her various Weyrs, because it's really fun to cut them down by not giving them gold or bronze dragons. And the most annoying ones usually leave after they don't get what they want, so it's fine. This troper also had an original fiction character score 117 on the Ponyland Press Mary Sue Test... So Yeah. He's since been toned down. *This Troper has a character, Akalah, whom she has loved since she created her in 7th grade. But Akalah needed to go through a LOT of reinvention after I realized how much of a Mary-Sue she was at first. She was in the Inu Yasha fandom, and Sesshoumaru's sister (full sister, and mind you this was a story I made with my friend, who played Inu Yasha's sister xD). Over the years, I slowly cut off all her ties to the Inu Yasha fandom except for how she actually looked. She still had long white hair and similar facial markings to Sesshoumaru, and even now she sometimes is mistaken for him. But I can rest easy knowing now that she has almost nothing to do with the fandom whatsoever. *This troper has an original character who is supposed to be a slightly parodic Sue. **On the Sue side, the character is immensely good-looking, always has perfect hair, is always immaculately and stylishly dressed (including a longcoat), has one antique sidearm that works perfectly and one energy gun which was created just for him, is a navy commander despite being about thirty, commands his own ship (which is more of a glorified fighter, really, making him an Ace Pilot), does so well, and has boys and girls all over him (in the setting, Everyone Is Bi). **On the un-Sue side, he's obsessed about his own looks (and fairly proud of them too), refuses to abandon his longcoat despite how incredibly dangerous it is in a spacegoing environment, beat someone up in order to take the antique sidearm, sold the guy's possessions off for the custom weapon, has his officership more by virtue of rich and influential family than talent (although he is exceptionally talented), and can't maintain a stable relationship. *This Troper happens to have a self insert who got a score of 11 (17+ is some level of Mary Sue) in a Sonic the Hedgehog RP. The character was originally intended for comic relief (mostly involving Breaking the 4th wall ) *This Troper once joined a roleplaying forum after reading every single character profile on the site and finding no less than eight Mary's and Gary's, all played totally straight; in response to one Gary Stu (who, at thirteen years old, killed some enemy of his by shoving him into— and I quote, "a hobo fire") with powers over the elements (the classical elements, not "the 100+ elements of science"), she created Umino Kuzu, the princess of Atlantis who did have control over the 100+ elements of science, and used the power of her several-hundred-foot tall column of steel hair to hold Atlantis above sea level; a whirlwind romance with a human, Cock Steelharde, caused her to abandon her station as Pillar of Atlantis, and sank it. Her eyes changed color with local ocean conditions (I believe pink meant "harmful plankton"). She was accepted without any complaints or suggested changes. It was glorious, and cripplingly sad. *Oh dear God help me. My best friend from high school insists on putting stories of his on deviantart that are basically fanfiction of our high school years. His main character is so obviously a hot, perfect version of him it's not even funny, and he always has the boy he had a crush on in school falling desperately in love with him (in real life, said love interest didn't know he existed). He's read my stuff for a long time, so I want to return the favor, but ... the Gary Stuness makes my eyes bleed! Especially since he used to make fun of me if my characters even remotely resembled someone from our school years, even if it was an accident. Help!!! *This troper has a (very simple at the moment) universe in his head, and he realized recently that every single person, species and mythical being within this universe is a mary sue in one way or another. Luckily, because all of them are like that, it balances out and it doesn't seem jarring at all. *This troper once tried to make a fic with no less than twelve Mary Sues. God, it was hideous, luckily I got better. *I tried to sneak out of MS characters by making a male one. Result? a Marty Stu who was just like me *This troper has the misfortune to know no fewer than two Mary Sues in real life: an impossibly beautiful girl with the Most Common Superpower, a messed-up love life, boys falling over their feet to date her and good marks in everything, and another girl who's ridiculously good at everything and who all the teachers love. This troper has also been called a Mary Sue because she gets very high marks in, well...most things, PE excepted, and is apparently a credit to her school. *This troper's mom might as well be this. The aforementioned troper's dad was engaged to a woman and they were already working on freaking wedding invitations. Then he met this troper's mom, he blew off the engagement, and married her. It might has well have been a really bad fanfiction. *The Ricks Center for Gifted Children is full of these buggers. To describe a couple from my graduating class, A beautiful sports star who played lead roles in the plays constantly and never had any less than an A, an eccentric walking encyclopedia of European history who is also a champion fencer and debator also numerous distaff counterparts of both of them. Lastly myself, who would really rather not indulge himself in a description, but for the sake of example; A brilliant actor and athlete to whom science, math and history come as second nature and gets on well with everyone. Granted I am horribly oblivious and lazy, but I feel rather unfortunate that I am so Stuish. Gah! What have I done? *This Troper just realized that her best friend is a Mary Sue. Really. Said friend is very attractive, switches between extremely low self-esteem and over-the-top arrogance, is very smart, had a 'tragic' background that she constantly wangsts about, thinks everything is about her, etc. Hell, recently she practically said "I'M GOOD AT TOO MANY THINGS. IT'S A FUCKING CURSE". *This troper isn't sure if her original character, who lives in the Big Bang Theory universe, could qualify as a Mary Sue. Miranda Melody Browning, a.k.a. Mindy, is five-feet-nothing, fair-skinned (and she's from Pasadena!) with light brown freckles across her nose, has thick wavy strawberry hair down to her waist and huge, innocent blue-green eyes. More cute than beautiful. She plays rhythm guitar for an all-girl rock band, The Shazbots, and gives guitar and piano lessons to pay her bills. Her voice is her defining feature — it spans four octaves (at one point she tells Sheldon, "Your IQ is like my vocal range!") and has the apparent power to charm everyone within a twenty-yard radius, especially Leonard, Howard, and Raj. She also manages, upon meeting them, to teach the former two to harmonize and the latter to correctly use a tambourine within five minutes. On the un-Sue side, Mindy has some quirks that could give Sheldon a run for his money: her Jetglo Rickenbacker 325 is on her person at all times (she even sleeps with it), will randomly break into song in conversation, and either shortens people's names or calls them by nicknames if she doesn't think they fit him or her (Leonard and Howard become Leo and Howie). She sincerely believes that music is the glue that holds the universe together. Leonard Leo says of Mindy, "She's basically a music Sheldon." Oh, and did I mention Mindy falls madly in love with Sheldon and finds out that he's the only one her voice can't charm? **Mindy scored a 62 on the litmus test: Uber-Sue!! *Two stories from this troper: **Almost every OC I've created has scored positive on this Mary Sue Litmus test. I've long since given up on fixing them, since it only seemed to make things worse. **I once told my best friend that he, to me at least, seemed like a gigantic Marty Stu. When he tried to argue he wasn't, he only came up with two flaws. Sure enough, he scored 'irredeemable' on the litmus test. *This troper sometimes fears that she's a Mary Sue in real life— she's tall, attractive, keeps her figure no matter what she eats, has properly green eyes and a Tragic Backstory, gets good grades, can act, sing, write, play guitar, draw, and look good in just about anything, and things tend to work out for her in weird ways. Fortunately (well, sort of) she's got a boatload of flaws to balance all that. One of her roommates, on the other hand, is a blatant Jerk Sue and makes no effort to do anything about it. *In an MMORPG this troper played, one female guild member described herself as being a model, having an angelic singing voice, a talented dress-maker, able to play 8-11 instruments (the story varied), able to draw professional-quality hentai at age 12, fluent in Japanese, and so selfless that she paid for her cousin's college education rather than going herself...among other things. In addition, multiple male players were madly in love with her. Later, her entire story started to crumble after it was found that her jaw-dropping "original" drawings were really from a Japanese visual novel, and she was far too average-looking to have believably been a model. She had made up everything to make herself out to be a real-life Mary Sue. Somehow this didn't affect her popularity with the opposite sex...that's MMO boys for you! *Another real-life Sue. This Troper knows a girl who is tall, beautiful, has a magnificent singing voice, is in a band, is a ridiculously talented artist, scored the highest grades in her exams, played a main character brilliantly in the school play, everyone loves her...it makes this troper sick. The thing is, I can't bring myself to hate her because she's the nicest person! *Another real-life Sue for ya'll—My best friend in high school had stunning blue eyes, a nice complexion, and natural ringlets. She made several people re-examine their religious beliefs by being such a strong believer herself, and everyone liked her. She took lots of AP and college classes and still was valedictorian of her class, and to top it all off, had transferred to the school because she'd been running around with the wrong people. *This troper once saw someone online (Anti-Shurtugal, I think) complain about Odysseus being a blatant Mary Sue. I swear that if I could have leapt across the internet to punch him I would have. *Here's a real life sue for you: naturally skinny and eats whatever she wants, blonde, tan, described by most as the "prettiest girl" they've met, any guy you like is guaranteed to be in love with her instead, has 2 sisters who love her, is extremely popular, talented and the nicest person you'll meet in a long time. This Troper has thought several times "I wish I was her"... *This troper had a character for the Sonic fandom named Jordan the Hedgehog (named after myself). She was basically Shadow, but replace his red markings with pink markings and give him a teal shirt. I gave her lots of backstories, one where she was created from the positive energy of the chaos emeralds, one where she was found the same way Shadow was, one where she was almost roboticized but her father sacrificed himself and she got psychic powers... you get the deal. *This troper, in my first original story, almost ran head-first into this. While the main character, James, was an average kid who happened to be a decent swordsman, his companion, Sara (A girl who was only a year younger than James), was going to end up as a Mary Sue at the end of the story. Toward the end of the story, it would be revealed that she is really part-angel; able to sprout wings and fly, use healing magic very effectively, and has Rapunzel Hair and a Pimped Out Dress to top it all off. Thankfully, none of that made it into the story; I decided to scrap it at the last minute because it seemed too over-the-top to me. *While delving into Fan Fiction.Net, I have found at least two fic, both crossovers from this anime series called Van Dread, that involved Sues. One, being Halo, where Chief is a Possession Sue and the writer painstakingly keeps explaining things in block detail that he/she might as well create another page for the technical stuff, and the same pretty much goes for his other fic, crossing over with Gundam SEED, where a Coordinator son of Lacus and Kira always manages to show off his capabilities and he gets the girl. Five of them, to be exact. Of course, the reason why this person created the fic in the first place was to have lemons, so that's probably why the stuff wasn't too good to begin with, but that's a pretty bad excuse... *gunpsycho This troper has a character who's sort of stu-ish (able to come back to life immediately upon dying, albiet "respawning" in a certain spot and really good with weapons he finds lying around. However, in the later stories, he'll start dying... a lot.) but he has no tragic past to speak of seeing that he is no fan of such things. On top of that, seeing that he loves a good challenge, the opposition he's up against escalates rather quickly as the story progresses, guaranteeing that he'll die several times before he finally wins. **Another one by gunpsycho This troper, he has Josef Prime. Subverted in that he specifically specializes in dealing with characters in either side that are stupidly-overpowered even by Hero or Big Bad standards (said standards depends on the fanfic in question, of course) via power level-dampening attacks and an anti-sue aura that's constantly active around him which prevents . Also subverted in that against whichever canon character he fights, he scales up or down to said character's level as he isn't into curb-stomping his foes. *This troper has created a Sue for a story he is planning. She is an amazing mage and swordfighter, can use all kinds of magic and everyone save the main character and The Lancer like her (and they get told off for calling her out on being a control freak), she is beautiful and clumsy and down-to-earth and around her the main characers start losing more and more fights with the big bads forces. Also, her name is Jenna Ravenblade. I haven't figured out a way to enforce it yet though... *When I was in a bowling league, I played against a kid who scored an average of 279 (for non-bowlers, that's pretty dang impressive for a professional, let alone a kid.) It turned out that both of us played Magic The Gathering, but I used a deck of old, slightly wimpy cards ("Gives all Hawks +1/+1"), and he had a deck in which every creature was a Sliver, a type that gives bonuses to every other Sliver on the field, making him essentially unbeatable. Other times, we played the light-gun games in the bowling alley's arcade, and he once beat Area 51 on a single coin. He could also write offensive but incredibly funny songs, and on one occasion he displayed a previously unmentioned but amazing talent for acting. And to top it off, he was a total Jerkass who never got called out for it. One of my fondest memories is of looking at two cards in a buddy's Magic deck and realizing a combo that would allow him to kill every creature on the field and take this twerp down a peg. (Incidentally, the last I heard of this guy was after he suffered a mental breakdown. The pressure to be perfect finally got to him.) **On the other hand, I believe the Mary Sue in fiction can be corralled by simply examining the implications of his or her actions. I once attempted to write a parody of High Fantasy in which every main character was some form of Mary Sue—the loves-humanity, hates-orcs Standardized Leaderwho's the best fighter and an amazing spellcaster too, the sickeningly perfect girl with an ass-kicking Superpowered Evil Side that gives her the perfect opportunity to Wangst, the character who doesn't seem to have any combat skills whatsoever but knows exactly what to say to manipulate people, etc. The aforementioned three were the last survivors when they reached the Mac Guffin they were searching for, a super-magical sword that shot beams that could instantly annihilate everything except humans and dragons. I spent a long time thinking about how to end the story once they got it, and realized I couldn't think of anything that wasn't a Deus Ex Machina. Then I thought, what would these people do if I left them to their own devices? The leader-guy was established as desiring to "purify" the perfect girl's dark side, and it would be totally in-character for him to attempt to do so with the sword. This would, of course, kill her, but he wouldn't feel any guilt for it—he'd curse the heavens that she'd been so far gone into darkness as to be irredeemable, and would be completely unable to understand that she hadn't truly "gone into darkness" in the first place and he'd just committed murder. The manipulative guy, who'd spent the whole story trying to get the sword for the heroes for fear that the alternative would be the slaughter of all humanity, would realize how badly he'd screwed up, his mind would snap into little pieces, and he'd launch an all-out assault on the "hero"—which, thanks to Chekhov's Gun, he might actually win. That is how the Thirty Mary Sue Pileup can turn out. *This troper recalls an indescribable sue starring in a Sweeney Todd fanfic she wrote years ago-she was not only Benjamin Barker and Mrs. Lovett's illigitimate child, but she also saved the day, was incredibly pretty, killed the bad guy with her bare hands and-ugh, need I go on? Thank Frith I never actually published it. *I knew a girl in my high school biology class who was kinda Mary Sue-ish. Tall, thin, popular, star of the basketball team. These traits are moderate Mary-Sue traits. Her major Mary-Sue traits are (or were, I haven't seen her in two years): high school valedictorian and apparently Ben Affleck's second cousin. However, the traits that make her NOT a Mary-Sue is her quiet personality and rather ordinary name, which I won't say to protect her privacy. She's a great person, I just sort of resented her during high school. Category:Troper Tales